Sunday, August 25, 2013

Weather Rewind -- August 18-24, 2013

Temperatures last week, despite the warmth that was situated around Tuesday through Thursday, averaged out to 1.1 degrees below average...helping to likely cement our below average August around here. Clouds and cool started the week, as well as ended it on Friday, but a midweek stretch of mid and upper 80's helped bring a sense of reality that it was still sorta summer out there...even if we can't squeeze a 90 degree day out of a warm regime.

Philly's rain was mainly centered around thunderstorms that moved through on Thursday, bringing 1.08" to the Airport in two rounds through the course of the day. More rain fell along I-295 and I-95 across New Jersey -- some spots picked up three to four inches of rain in Central Jersey and highway flooding occurred along I-295 in Burlington County from Thursday morning's soaking storms.

That 1.08" on Thursday pushed our summer-to-date total to 28.67", which is 0.52" shy of the 1867 unofficial record for most rainfall (29.19"). The 1867 record occurred before the government started tracking weather data and is thus unofficial. Regardless, the 28.67" in nearly three months in Philadelphia is amazing when compared to the fact that Trenton, for the YEAR, has just 31.95" of rain and is running less than two inches above average this year or that Reading has picked 28.38" for the year and is less than a quarter inch above average! It shows how localized the rainfall in any one spot can be and how even though one spot could be getting record rains, another not far away is just merely "average."